Mayor Mamdani announced a multi-agency housing initiative aimed at improving housing quality, reducing health disparities and preserving existing neighborhoods, with a major focus on communities in the South and Northwest Bronx.
The announcement, made Tuesday at Powerhouse Arts in Gowanus, Brooklyn, outlined the city’s new “Block by Block: Housing for a New Era” initiative, which will officially launch this fall.
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and the Mayor’s Office of Equity & Racial Justice, alongside other city agencies, elected officials and community organizations, will begin an intensive planning process to coordinate proactive government interventions in neighborhoods facing some of the city’s most severe housing challenges.
The plan will target high-need neighborhoods in the South Bronx, including: Mott Haven, Melrose, Tremont, Crotona and the Northwest Bronx, including: Fordham, University Heights, Kingsbridge and Bedford Park.
“At a moment when working people are being pushed out of the city they built, New York cannot afford half-measures or delays,” Mayor Mamdani said.
“This plan meets the housing crisis with the urgency it demands. We are setting the most ambitious housing production and preservation targets in the city’s modern history – and backing them up with investments to match – while also protecting tenants and homeowners, investing in public housing and ensuring the workers building that housing have good-paying, safe jobs,” he added.
We must fight for both the tenants of today and the tenants of tomorrow. Block by Block shows how New York City can do exactly that.”
The Bronx plan includes expanded outreach and enforcement in buildings with elevated asthma and lead-related conditions, increased support for repairs to prevent further building deterioration and tenant and landlord workshops focused on the intersection of housing and public health in partnership with the Department of Health and community organizations.
The initiative also proposes quality-of-life improvements in neighborhoods that have already seen significant affordable housing investment. In coordination with local stakeholders and city agencies, the city plans to improve sidewalk cleanliness, lighting, accessibility, landscaping, safety measures and public art.
City officials will also explore converting vacant retail and community facility spaces within affordable housing developments and NYCHA campuses into childcare centers and other community services.
Another proposal would pilot a tenant-based equity program designed to allow renters to build wealth connected to their buildings without taking on the risks of homeownership. Officials said the concept aims to address long standing racial inequities in wealth-building opportunities that have disproportionately affected Black New Yorkers.
City officials acknowledged that the Bronx continues to face some of the city’s most severe housing quality and stability challenges, that has not been addressed by affordable housing development alone.
According to the plan, 10% of Bronx households face an eviction filing each year, while 26% of residents reported three or more maintenance deficiencies in their homes. The proposal also points to recent fatal residential fires in aging buildings, tying many of those disparities to decades of redlining, segregation and disinvestment in the Bronx.
Reach Marina Samuel at msamuel@schnepsmedia.com. For more coverage, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
